“Look,” Max said. “I know you are not crying over your husband’s death, and I know why. We all know why. But I have a job to do, and I can use your help. If you prefer not to help me, I can ask the OPP to take you to Cranston. They’ll ask you a lot of stuff there, for a long time. It’s up to you. I know Ryan Kelly was here this morning because he told me. He told me a lot of things. And I don’t care if you two spent the time in bed or sat at the window and watched birds. I just want you to tell me what time he came here and when he left.”
Deborah looked out the window as she spoke. “He got here at noon. He left a little after one. We drank coffee and ate donuts. The rest of the time we did not watch birds. The truth is that we spent most of the time in bed. It was fun.”
“You’re sure about those times?”
“Yes.” Deborah’s eyes moved up the wall next to Max. “A little bird told me. The one in that clock. That’s the only one we watched.” Max turned to see a cuckoo clock on the wall above her head. “It came out at twelve thirty when I was in the kitchen making Ryan some fresh coffee. I brought it to him. In bed.” She looked at Max, tilted her head and smiled.
The times matched Ryan Kelly’s story. Which didn’t make it true, Max told herself. “Tell me, woman to woman,” Max said. “What did Billy Ray have that could attract a woman like you, and Brenda Karp, to him?”
Deborah smiled. “Some of us like bad boys. The kind who take you for rides on their motorcycle at night and dare you to do things you don’t want to do. They make you feel alive for a while. Maybe you even marry them. Then one day you ask yourself, What have I done?” She turned her head to look away. “You either get it or you don’t.”
Max didn’t get it. She had spent years in Toronto around so-called bad boys who had done bad things. She had never seen anything about them that might attract her. But who knew?
Deborah spoke again. “By the way,” she said, “I get Billy Ray’s house and land. That was my idea. He wanted me, he had to share the land.” She tilted her head and smiled again. “No fool here, right? The company that wants to build that resort can have it for one million dollars cash.” She held the same cold smile. “In case you didn’t know. The price, I mean.”
“You sound sure about getting his land,” Max said.
“I called the lawyer as soon as I heard. About him being dead, I mean. The land is in both our names, which leaves me the sole owner. We signed a deal that will hold up in court. That gives me a motive, right? To kill him, I mean. But I didn’t.”
There was nothing more to learn here. Max stood and walked to the door. “Thanks for your time,” she said.
“Sure.” Deborah was behind her.
At the door, Max looked across the rocks to the lake. “Did you see anybody else here today?” she said.
Deborah did not speak for a moment. Then she said, “When I came to the kitchen for the coffee around twelve thirty. Looked out the window and saw a man from town on the shore over there.”
“Did you know him?” Max asked.
“I think it was Ivan, the real-estate guy.”
“Ivan Curic? Did you tell Ryan about it?”
She shrugged. “Don’t think so. Why bother? He was just walking back to his car, parked on the road. At least he wasn’t shooting any guns.”
Max turned to her. “What does that mean?”
“That blond piece of fluff Brenda, who moved in with Billy Ray after I left? She and some guy were here last night, in the old quarry past the trees. I could hear them shooting for at least an hour.”
“It couldn’t have been that loud.”
“No, but it made me nervous. I was going to call you and say you should tell them to stop. Then it stopped, so I didn’t call. I went out back, and I saw them drive past in her new boyfriend’s truck. I stood glaring at them, but they didn’t see me. That’s it. You on your way now?”
Max walked down the stairs and sat behind the wheel of the police car for a minute. It had been a waste of time and gas to come out here, she thought. There had been nothing to learn from Billy Ray’s widow. Ivan Curic had told Max he came to look at the land after the storm passed, and Deborah Edwards said it was true.
Max had to admit the truth. The case would be turned over to the OPP after all. Somewhere in her notes was a clue that would reveal the murderer, but she would have to leave it to the OPP to find it. And accept that when it came to solving a murder, she was in over her head.
But on the way back to town, thinking about the case, it all came to her.
She had found more than a clue to the death of Billy Ray.
She had found the murderer.
EIGHT
“They say the bridge won’t be fixed until after seven o’clock,” Margie Burns said when Max walked into the police station. It was just after five. “Nobody else called. Henry’s gone home to feed his cat. If it’s all right with you, I’m going home to make peach jam.”
“Can you wait a bit?” Max said. She swept past Margie on the way to her office. “I could use you and Henry to help me tonight.”
“With what?”
“An arrest.”
Margie’s eyes grew wide. “For Billy Ray’s murder?”
“That’s right.” Max entered her office, Margie trotting behind her. “But not until eight o’clock. In the meantime, I want you to make a phone call, then stay and help us if you can.”
“The peaches can wait,” Margie said. “But I could go home and get some lasagna from the fridge and bring it back for us to eat.”
“Good.” Max’s mind wasn’t on lasagna. It was on murder. “Make the phone call first. Bring some food for Henry. Call and tell him to forget the cat and get here right away.”
Ivan Curic’s office was on the ground floor of the Ainslie Building. Designed by a famous Toronto architect and made of local granite, it was the most stylish building in town. At three stories, it was also the tallest.
Curic Realty was on the building’s ground floor. The two floors above it were filled with offices for lawyers, dentists and doctors. At this hour, all were empty except Curic Realty. That office was brightly lit, as though a party was being held there. In a way it was. One desk held bottles of wine and soft drinks. Bowls filled with potato chips and snacks were placed on other desks all around the office. Country music filled the air from large speakers in a corner.
Everyone had changed into better clothes than they had worn that afternoon when they saw Billy Ray’s body. Brenda Karp wore a skirt and blouse, and even Ben Black had changed into trousers and a shirt and tie. Most of them sipped from glasses of wine and smiled as they talked, as though they were at a social event. Which they were, even if the event marked someone’s death.
“Come in, come in,” Ivan called out when he saw Max at the front door. The smile faded when he saw the expression on Max’s face. It vanished when Henry Wojak and Margie Burns followed Max into the room. “Is something wrong?” Ivan said.
“Turn the music down,” Max said.
Ivan went into his office, and the music stopped.
“Quite a party you have here,” Max said when Ivan came back. Henry walked to the rear of the office. Margie stayed near the front door.
“It’s not what you think,” Ivan said. “We’re here to make plans for the town’s future.”
“What I’m going to do for the town’s future,” Max said, “is charge someone with Billy Ray’s murder.”
Brenda was the first to speak. “You think…” Her voice broke, and she had to start over. “You think one of us shot Billy Ray?”
“I know it, and I can prove it,” Max said.
“Who would do a thing like that?” Seth Torsney said. He moved closer to Brenda and put a hand on her arm.
“Well, you two for a start,” Max said.
Brenda began to cry. “You believe…you really believe that Seth and I could do such a thing?”
“You had some practice with a gun last night, right?” Max said. “Out near
Rockcliffe Point.”
“Now hold on there,” Seth said.
“I won’t hold on a minute more than I need to,” Max said. She looked at the wall clock. It read 8:20. She was right on time. Before Seth could speak, she pointed at Ryan Kelly. “You were at Rockcliffe Point today as well, weren’t you?” she said.
Ryan stayed calm. “If you think you’re spreading gossip,” he said, “you’re too late. I’ve told everyone here about Deborah and me.”
“How much will it help your business?” Max said.
Ryan said with a frown, “How much will what help my business?”
“The million dollars Deborah gets when she sells Billy Ray’s land.”
“It will be hers to sell, if she wants.”
“And yours to use. To save your winery, right?”
“If you’re saying…” Ryan began.
Max held a hand up to silence him and turned to Ben. “You were the last person to speak to Billy Ray, weren’t you?” she said.
Ben set his glass of red wine on a desk. Then he leaned on it and said, “Yeah. Through a closed door.”
“But you were there to get money that Billy Ray owed you, right?”
“So what?”
“Billy Ray said he had a shotgun.”
“I told you from the start.”
“Which he said he would use.”
“I told you that too.”
“Which was a good reason for you not to open the door.”
“A darn good one.”
“If you did, Billy Ray might have shot both barrels of his gun at you.”
“I believe he might have.” Ben nodded as he spoke. “In fact, he would have. I’m sure of it.”
Max swept the room with her eyes. “Let me ask all of you,” she said. She looked across the room at Sam Little. Out of the corner of her eye she could see someone heading for the rear door. She waved at Henry but kept her eyes on Sam. “Why would someone open a door if he knew the man behind it had a shotgun and that man said he would shoot anyone who tried to come in?”
The person near the far wall stopped at the sight of Henry and turned around. Now he was on his way to the front door. Max had to raise her voice to be heard over the sound of footsteps and falling furniture. “Unless,” she said, “he knew that the man behind the door was dead. And no one would know Billy Ray was dead except whoever had shot him two hours before.” Her last words were lost in a cry of pain and panic as Margie knocked Ivan to the floor.
With a nod from Max, Henry walked to Ivan, holding his handcuffs.
“How about that,” Sam said.
“Ivan had looked at the garage when he put a price on the place,” Brenda said. “So he knew the lock on that window was broken.” Margie was behind Ivan, twisting one arm up. Ivan was wincing in pain. Margie smiled at Max and said, “Guess I’ve still got it.” She lowered his arm long enough for Henry to put the cuffs on Ivan, who leaned against the wall with his head down.
Max looked out to Main Street just as the OPP van arrived from Cranston. Well, that was fun, she told herself. Now the paperwork needs to be done.
“That was,” Henry said as he picked at the last of Margie’s lasagna, “the best bit of police work done outside of Toronto.” It was almost midnight, and the Port Ainslie police station was well lit on a dark Muskoka night.
“Those OPP guys don’t care what we did to nail Ivan as the killer,” Max said. “They don’t agree he should be charged right away. They want to question him on their own. They don’t think we could have done what they’re supposed to do.” She grinned. “But we did.”
“Did you hear that one guy,” Henry said, “the big sergeant? Did you hear him say he would have worked it out himself, right away? About Ivan opening the garage door, I mean. He said it wouldn’t have taken him all day to work it out. He would have known it was Ivan as soon as he heard Ivan opened the door.”
“Maybe he might have got it,” Max said. “But I didn’t. Not until I went out to see Deborah Edwards at Rockcliffe Point.”
“What did that prove?” Margie said. They had eaten lasagna, apple strudel, cheddar cheese and hot coffee, all brought from Margie’s kitchen. They couldn’t stop talking about the day’s events.
“Didn’t prove a thing,” Max said. She got up to fill her coffee mug. “It just sent me back to Ivan’s tale. About how he opened the garage door. It hadn’t sounded right, but I didn’t know why. Then, when I heard he had walked on the shore at Rockcliffe Point, I knew he had lied to me. He said he had been there looking for land to build the resort on. It would be plan B for the resort if Billy Ray wouldn’t sell his land. But that didn’t make sense. No one would build a family resort there. There’s no beach and no room for buildings. Who would pay big bucks to stay in a place like that? So I had to ask myself why he was there.”
“To toss away the gun,” Henry said. “Throw it into the lake. They’ll be dragging the water for it first thing in the morning.”
“The gun he told you had been stolen,” Margie added.
“That’s when I thought about the garage door,” Max said. “Driving back from the Point, it all became clear.”
Margie said, “I’ll bet that show-off OPP cop wouldn’t have put things together the way you did.”
“And I’ll bet the town council will have more respect for you now that you solved a murder all on your own,” Henry said.
Max thought about that. Then she said with a smile, “You know what? I don’t think I care anymore.”
And they still, she knew, would call her Max.
She didn’t care about that anymore either.
JOHN LAWRENCE REYNOLDS has had thirty works of award-winning fiction and nonfiction published. A Murder for Max is his first book in the Maxine Benson Mystery series. He lives in Burlington, Ontario, with his wife, Judith.
AN EXCERPT FROM
MURDER
BELOW ZERO
A MAXINE BENSON MYSTERY
BY JOHN LAWRENCE REYNOLDS
COMING FALL 2017
ONE
“You wouldn't be upset if this were January,” Margie Burns said. “I wouldn’t be upset if this was Baffin Island either,” Maxine Benson said. “But it’s not. It’s June in Muskoka and I have to wear a sweater, which is wrong. All wrong.”
It was early on a Monday morning, just past seven.
Winter had been mild and almost free of snow. Everyone looked forward to a soft spring and a hot summer. “That’s the way it works around here,” they said. “Shiver in January, swelter in June.”
But summer was staying away, and so were the tourists. On the second morning in June snow fell on top of Granite Mountain and lawns shone with frost. “It’s just a cold snap,” people said. “Be gone soon.” But now it was the middle of June, and the cold remained. People began saying to each other, “Tell me again about global warming—I could use a laugh.”
“These things happen,” Margie said. “The weather has its own mind, you know. We just have to give it time.”
“I’d like to give it hell,” Henry Wojack said. He had finished his coffee and was blowing into his cupped hands.
“Well, you must admit,” Margie said, “people behave themselves in this weather. Makes our job easier. If things get slower around here, we’ll all have to retire.” She was making her weekly report on crime in Port Ainslie. There was never much to report, but so far there was even less than usual.
Bruce Orville Peter Chadwick, known as Bop, spent Tuesday night in a jail cell for being drunk in a public place. The truth was, he had been sober. It would be too cold for Bop to sleep in the park that night, so he had asked Margie to let him sleep in the corner cell, his favourite. Margie said she couldn’t do it unless she booked him for a crime. Bop swore he was drunk, so Margie said, “Okay,” and asked how he would like his eggs in the morning.
There had been a break-in at a cottage down the lake, but the owners said nothing was taken. A power generator was stolen from a home on Creek Road
. Max had to tell a teenage rock band to close their garage door when they were playing. Even with the garage door closed, they were still loud, but no one seemed to care. A dog had run through the town without a leash. Everyone knew the dog’s owner was old Dale Carter, so Max called, told him where to find his dog. “Take it home and keep it tied up,” she said. Carter felt so guilty that he sent Max a box of chocolates for her trouble. And a week ago a woman called to report her husband was missing. He had been gone two days. His name, she said, was Robert Morton. Max had passed this to the Ontario Provincial Police, who handled serious crimes. A missing person was serious, but Max knew that most missing people turned up within a few days. She and Henry and Margie dealt with small matters. Like dogs running loose, petty theft and loud rock bands.
“Less trouble than normal this week, thanks to the cold weather,” Margie said. She closed the report book. “I swear they have more crime over at the St. Marks bridge club.”
Max and Henry stood looking out the window. They had finished their coffee and morning chat. Now there was not much to do but watch people pass by on Main Street. Most wore winter jackets, scarves, hats and gloves.
Which is when the phone rang.
Max hit the phone’s speaker button and said, “Port Ainslie Police Department, Chief Benson here.” Max liked to say her title aloud. She was the only female police chief in Muskoka, and she wanted everyone to know it.
A woman’s panicky voice sounded from the phone’s speaker. “There’s…” she began. She started over. “There is a man lying in the ditch on Bridge Road, near Elm Street.” Where, Max wondered, was Bop Chadwick? “Is he drunk”? she said.
“I don’t know,” the woman asked. Her voice was lower and more steady. “I mean, he is naked. And dead. And the body is frozen stiff.”
“If this is someone’s idea of a joke about the weather,” Margie said while Max and Henry grabbed their jackets and ran for the door, “they have gone too far.”
Murder for Max, A Page 5
